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9.07.2011

family of annie le files wrongful death lawsuit against yale

The family of Annie Le, the Yale graduate student who was killed in a research lab just days before her wedding in 2009, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the school: Family of slain Yale student sues university.

Annie Le went missing five days before her wedding in September 2009. Her strangled body was found stuffed in a wall at the lab building where she worked. Raymond Clark III, an animal research technician who worked in the same building, was sentenced to 44 years in prison for Le's murder.

The lawsuit claims that the university had a sexually hostile environment and had failed to adequately protect women on campus for years:

The lawsuit claims that before Le's killing, Yale had for years failed to take adequate steps to protect women on the New Haven campus. It also claims school officials should have known that Clark posed a potential danger to Le's safety, because he had previously demonstrated aggressive behavior and a "violent propensity towards women."

In April, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights confirmed that it was investigating complaints by Yale University students that the university had a sexually hostile environment and failed to adequately respond to sexual harassment concerns.

"Yale's persistent tolerance of sexual harassment and sexual assaults on campus caused students to file (the) complaint against Yale University," the Le family's lawyers, New York-based Joseph Tacopina and Stamford, Conn.-based Paul Slager, said in a statement Tuesday. "And, just five days before she was to be married, Annie Le was a victim of that environment."

The lawsuit, which names Yale University and its medical school, only says it is seeking an unspecified amount of money greater than $15,000, which is standard in Connecticut when lawsuits are first filed. The damages and legal fees sought by the plaintiffs could total in the millions of dollars.